The opening speech is citing the questions from others “Is it allowed to paint Hitler? Is it necessary at all to paint Hitler?”

Those questions are not relevant dealing in the media of art as long as you are not calling for destructive actions. The artist gives expression to his self through painting, photography, video art, sculpturing or any other medium. Art will be considered valuable as long as it will evoke in us the audience feelings, invite us to think, to reconsider our ideas, to react, to look into ourselves.

The paints of Hitler are bothersome. They are telling us Hitler was a human being, powerful, with extreme cruelty. His blue eye becomes bigger and bigger so you cannot run away from it. It will penetrate into your nightmares.

The artist planted in his work the words VATER and MUTTER so it makes me think Hitler has parents, he was born to a woman flesh and blood.

When Hitler is mentioned in Israel where I come from, you always add to his name the curse – let his name and his memory be erased from earth – it means that the worst that can happen to a human being is that his name, his memory, will be vanished for all eternity. This is the ultimate revenge for the human being. So here Christian as if he is doing the opposite, he brings back Hitler into life, in to consciousness, expose him as a human being and not as a monster. He brings him back to our memory.

But it is not really so. Hitler’s name was never erased from our consciousness. We, the second and third generation are still dealing with the consequences of his horrible deeds. Both sides, Germans and Jews.

In my 4 months staying in Berlin I came to realize what was surprising to me that the German people second and third generation came out from this war wounded and destructed. Not only our people.

I am asking myself had I ever met Hitler in art work so I think of Charlie Chaplin’s film The Great Dictator. There Hitler’s image is very clear. His grandiosity is ridiculed, caricaturized.

In Christian’s art the persona is not one dimensional. Sometimes it looks as if he identifies with the victims like in his performance as naked while his mother paints on his body a swastika. Other times one can get the impression that he is attracted and awe by Hitler’s power and totality. Christian himself works as a total artist with his body and psyche. But it is needless to say and awful at the same time the materials with whom Hitler worked were innocent human beings. His performance was being God and not on stage. That made him a monster flesh and blood.

In the work about the imprisonment in Bulgaria and in the GDR Christian is the victim, the victim of the system. Also in this work are existing 2 elements: from one side being the naked victim, on the other side he explicit the most horrible pictures from the time of the war, Muselmann Jews, naked, screened in front of the visitors without them being prepared to it, not expecting for it (as when you go to Yad Vashem Museum). In this act he became the aggressor, he attacked the audience. He put them in to a kind of shock. Victim and aggressor are intermingling in both of his work.

When I read the text about the time of his arrest in the GDR when he was in isolation and felt like he is going mad, suddenly he discovered a spider, came into contact with it, talked to it and when he described the legs of the spider long and thin I had in my mind the swastika that has something from a spider legs…I wish the artist will make this transformation in his work.

The art of Christian provoke the audience to think, to feel, to look deeper in to the inner self.